PR 2807 ^B 
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(Sfatteo to (Enffltel) Classic* Settee 


HAMLET 

(Shakespeare) 


BY 

CORNELIA BEARE, B.A. 

Instructor of English, Wadleigh High School 
New York City 



NEW YORK 

GLOBE BOOK COMPANY 
















ENGLISH LITERATURE, THREE YEARS 

Contains outlines of required readings In the first three y< 


ENGLISH 



ye*rs : «f high school. 


It also includes recent examination papers in literature, composition, gram¬ 
mar and rhetoric. 


ENGLISH LITERATURE, FOURTH YEAR 


V Contains outlines of required readings in the fourth year of the high school. 
It also includes recent examination papersin literature, composition, gram¬ 
mar and rhetoric. 



CLASSICS 


Include outlines, summaries, explanatory notes, biography, bibliography and 
recent examination questions. 


American Poems (Selected) 


Julius Caesar 
Life of Johnson 
Macbeth 

Merchant of Venice 
Milton's Minor Poems 
Odyssey 
Silas Mamer 
Speech on Conciliation 
Sketch Book 
Tale of Two Cities 
Vision of Sir Launfal 


Ancient Mariner 
As You Like It 


Browning's Poems (Selected) 
Essay on Bums 
Franklin's Autobiography 


Golden Treasury 
Hamlet 


Idylls of the King 


Ivanhoe 


Other Titles in Preparation 


CURRENT LIFE, The Magazine for Schools 

A periodical adopted for the study of current events; national and Inter¬ 
national, political, literary, scientific, etc. 


Helen H. Crandell 


HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 


NOTEBOOK FOR COMPOSITION AND GRAMMAR 

This notebook has been designed for recording rules and corrections per¬ 
taining to English composition and grammar. Eminently practical. 

NOTEBOOK FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

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high school course in English. Appropriate questions test the student’s 
appreciation of each of the works read. A list of recommended works 
is given. 


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<0ttt&e£i to ©nffltsl) Claomcs f&erteo 


HAMLET 

(Shakespeare) 


BY 

CORNELIA BEARE, B.A. 

Instructor of English, Wadleigh High School 
New York City 



NEW YORK 

globe book company 




Copyright 1923, by 
GLOBE BOOK COMPANY 


feb 



14 1923 

© Cl A697788 




PREFACE 


With the market so crowded with editions of the 
classics, the publishers of these Outlines would have hesi¬ 
tated to bring forth this book, were there not a uni¬ 
versal demand among teachers and students for just 
such exposition as is here presented. Editors of works 
studied in high schools are apt to forget that their ex¬ 
planations are meant to help the inexperienced reader. 
For this reason the usual school editions have been of 
slight help to the student. 

The high school teachers who have prepared these 
Outlines have had years of experience with the mind that 
is confronted with a great literary work for the first time. 
They have given just such information and suggestive 
guidance as will enable the student fully to understand 
and enjoy the masterpiece, without being lost in a mass 
of irrelevant and dry discussion. They have arranged 
their material so as to make it possible for the student, 
if necessary, to pursue his work independently, whether 
his aim be the preparation for an examination or the 
furthering of his general culture. 


1 



CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Introduction . 7 

The Story of Hamlet. 11 

Structure of the Play. 21 

Characters . 26 

Notes and Comments on the Text. 31 

The Style . 35 

Famous Criticism . 37 

Shakespeare’s Life. 39 

Bibliography. 41 

Examination Questions . 42 


5 
























INTRODUCTION 


In order to read Hamlet intelligently it is necessary to 
know something about the production of a play at 
Shakespere’s time, the difference between this play and 
the old “drama of blood” which preceded it, the use of 
the supernatural at that time, the source of the plot and 
the language of the play. 

“The drama of blood” is a name given to the earliest 
tragedies because of the fact that “They present the 
bloody unfolding of a series of murders and allied 
crimes, so that every page fairly reeks with blood.” 
Of Shakespere’s plays Macbeth comes nearest to filling 
this definition. 

Production of a Play at the Time of Shakespere.— 

Let us imagine ourselves citizens of London in the seven¬ 
teenth century, on our way to a performance of Hamlet 
at the Curtain, Shakespere’s own theater, across the 
river and just outside the city limits, to which bounds the 
city fathers had banished all such places. It is nearly 
three o’clock, and for hours the flag of Lord Burleigh 
has been flying above the theater, for his players or 
“servants” are to give the tragedy this afternoon. We 
arrive at a curious-looking building, almost circular, 
with no windows visible, and with but part of a roof, 
the center being open to the sky. Paying our shilling 


7 


8 


INTRODUCTION 


each, we are permitted to find seats upon the rush-strewn 
stage, where already a number of gallants are assembled. 
No ladies are present, unless they be concealed behind 
the curtains of the rude boxes along the walls, for one 
can not so call the loud-voiced women of the streets 
who throng with the rough men on the open space before 
the stage, called the pit. The stage is hung in black, and 
at the center, extending well out to the front, is a queer 
sort of box-like arrangement, affording a sort of inner 
chamber where all interior scenes take place. From be¬ 
hind the arras at the back of the stage come two pages 
who walk to the front and announce the scene. Of 
scenery as we know it the stage is bare. The actors are 
dressed as are the folk around us, except that particular 
characters wear some distinguishing article such as a 
crown or a sword. Indeed we recognize the dress so 
badly worn by the shrill-voiced boy who plays the part 
of Ophelia, as having been worn but lately by a lady of 
the Burleigh household. As the play progresses the 
actors not actually playing at the moment often pass re¬ 
marks to the members of the audience seated on the 
stage, to the great disgust of those in the pit, who do not 
hesitate to make their displeasure known. No break 
occurs between the scenes for there is no scenery to be 
shifted and the play moves swiftly, the action broken 
only when the audience in the pit register their objection 
to the loud talking on the stage, or perhaps by a scuffle 
when a pickpocket is arrested at his trade and tied to a 
stake till the play is over, so that he may not molest 
others and yet may see the play for which he paid his 
sixpence for admission to the pit. Six o'clock sees the 


INTRODUCTION 


9 


theater empty and all honest citizens hastening home be¬ 
fore dark. 

Origin of the Plot.—The story itself is taken in part 
from a translation of the Historia Danica of Saxo Gram¬ 
maticus. Here the story of Hamlet appears. Shakespere 
has not adhered closely to this account, either in the 
names or in the natures of the chief characters, especially 
of Hamlet. He takes from it the account of the murder, 
the feigned madness, the hasty marriage, the hatred of 
the uncle-stepfather, the journey to England, but the 
part of Ophelia and the love story are not there, nor is 
Hamlet in any way the brooding philosopher of the play. 

Another play on the subject is known to have existed 
as early as 1587, and this Shakespere, as a playwright, 
must have seen, but the real Hamlet, with his insight into 
life, his profound melancholy, his intense humanity, is 
the work of Shakespere alone. 

Use of the Supernatural.—Because of the utter ab¬ 
sence of any attempt at creating a stage illusion, and be¬ 
cause the audience of Shakespere’s time were trained to 
use their imaginations, the poet constantly makes use 
of the supernatural. In Macbeth we have the air-drawn 
dagger, and Banquo’s ghost. In Hamlet one of the most 
important characters is the ghost of the murdered king. 
The manager today has to decide how to create for a 
sophisticated audience the real atmosphere of ghostliness, 
but the manager of that day had no difficulty with an 
audience that believed firmly in ghosts and witches and 
could see nothing strange in a costumer’s bill that de¬ 
manded six shillings for a pair of gloves for God! 

The Language of Shakespere.—The actual reading 


IO 


INTRODUCTION 


need present but few difficulties if we remember these 
few facts, pointed out by Dr. Abbott in his Shakesperean 
Grammar: 

“Shakespere lived at a time when the grammar and 
vocabulary of the English language were in a state of 
transition. Various points were not fixed, so the 
grammar of Shakespere is not only different from ours 
but at times it differs from itself. Almost any part of 
speech is used as any other part of speech. They askance 
their eyes, they speak of the backward and abysm of 
time; they happy their friends or fall the ax on the neck 
of their enemy. Even the cases of the pronouns are 
interchangeable, and the lover extols his lady as "the 
chaste, the fair, the unexpressive she / while his may 
mean his or its. Participles and past tenses are used by 
chance, not by rule, verbs agree or disagree with their 
subjects, double negatives are as frequent as double prep¬ 
ositions.” But with all this irregularity, the meaning 
stands out so clear that the wording, save in rare cases, 
does not hinder the understanding. 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


Act I. Expository and Incentive 

Scene i strikes the keynote of the play in the dreary 
cold of the winter night and in the words of Francisco: 
“I am sick at heart,” and in the mention of the ghost. The 
watchmen have told Horatio, Hamlet’s friend, of the 
dread apparition that has twice appeared in their watch, 
and he, not quite believing, has come to see. The ghost 
appears in the form of the dead King, but leaves with¬ 
out making reply to their questions as to who and what he 
is, and why he is there. They discuss the war with young 
Fortinbras of Norway, which threatens the kingdom, 
and see in the apparition of the dead king a portent of 
evil like that which troubled the “most high and palmy 
state of Rome a little ere the mightiest Julius fell.” 
The ghost returns and seems ready to speak to them 
when the cock crows. They depart as morning dawns, 
resolved to tell what they have seen to “young Hamlet,” 
sure that the ghost will speak to him. 

Scene 2. The king explains that since the death of his 
brother, the late king Hamlet, and his own marriage to 
Gertrude, the widow of Hamlet, he has taken on him¬ 
self to carry out the war with young Fortinbras, and has 
sent ambassadors to the Norwegian King to demand sur- 


11 


12 


THE STORY OF * HAMLET 


render. Laertes, son of Polonius, a noble of the court, 
who has come from France to the coronation of Claudius, 
asks and gets permission to return to France. Young 
Prince Hamlet, the only somber figure in the gay court, 
asked by his mother to lay aside his grief, bursts into a 
fit of passionate remonstrance at the charge that he is 
feigning grief. The king adds his request to the queen's 
and begs him not to return to the University of Witten¬ 
berg, but to remain in Denmark as his heir. Hamlet 
promises. As the others go out he bursts into a passion¬ 
ate soliloquy over his mother’s hurried marriage to her 
late husband’s brother, and her seeming forgetfulness of 
the dead king. Pie feels that only evil can come of it, 
but sees nothing for him to do but grieve. “Break, my 
heart, for I must hold my tongue.” Horatio and the 
watchmen thereupon enter to tell of the ghost, and he at 
once resolves to go with them to the ramparts to see for 
himself what this may be. “My father’s spirit in arms!” 
he cries, “All is not well! I fear foul play.” (Again the 
keynote of impending evil.) 

Scene 3 introduces us to the last of the important 
characters, Ophelia, and makes us aware of Hamlet’s 
love for her, at the same time revealing her gentle, weak 
nature that permits her to be swayed by any stronger will. 
Her brother, Laertes, warns her that a prince is not free 
to love as he will but only to wed as the “main voice of 
Denmark” approves, at the same time hinting that 
princes are prone to love and run away. His father, 
Polonius, speeds him on his way with the famous advice 
as to conduct that might almost be called the gentleman’s 
manual, so often has it been quoted as such, since. In 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


13 


it one sees all the shrewd worldly wisdom of the old 
courtier. As the son departs the father turns to Ophelia, 
and emphasizes the advice Laertes has just given her, 
bidding her give up at once all thought of Hamlet’s love. 
Ophelia is unwilling to believe any evil of the man she 
loves, but, like a dutiful daughter, promises to obey. 

Scenes 4 and 5 take place on the ramparts. Hamlet 
regrets the wild feasting that is giving the Danish people 
a bad name among other nations. As he speaks, the 
ghost enters. It beckons him aside and he goes, despite 
the remonstrances of the others. Questioning the ghost 
he learns that his fears of evil have been founded on 
fact, that Claudius poisoned the late king to get his 
crown and his wife. Thus speaking, the ghost exacts 
from Hamlet a solemn promise to revenge his “most 
foul murder.” At the same time he forbids his son to 
harm in any way the woman who was partner to the 
crime. Hamlet swears to remember the command of 
the ghost and see that it is executed. With this promise 
he enters upon the real action of the play. The introduc¬ 
tion ends, and the incentive has been reached. He swears 
the others to secrecy, and cautions them to show no sign 
of any knowledge of what they witnessed, and as he asks 
their promise the voice of the ghost is heard from the 
depths below, crying “Swear!” And so they part, 
Hamlet uttering the prophetic words: 

“The times are out of joint; O cursed spite 
That ever I was born to set it right.” 

He knows his own weakness and the greatness of the 
task to which he has been set. 


14 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


Act II. The Rising Action Develops and the Com¬ 
plicating Forces are Introduced 

Scene i. Polonius sends his servant to investigate his 
son’s actions in Paris. As the messenger goes Ophelia 
enters, terrified, telling her father of the strange actions 
of Hamlet who has just come to her, his face wild, his 
dress disordered—mad, she fears, because she has refused 
his love. Polonius sees in this an explanation of the 
prince’s strange behavior that has puzzled the court in 
the three months that have elapsed since Act I., and goes 
to tell the king of it. 

Scene 2. The king has sent for two former college 
mates of Hamlet’s, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, to 
get them to study Hamlet and find, if they can, the nature 
of his madness. King Claudius. hears Polonius’ tale of 
Hamlet’s love for Ophelia, and bids them see if this be 
the cause. Polonius interviews Hamlet, who replies in 
words that sound mad yet bite shrewdly, so shrewdly 
that the old man comments, “If this be madness there is 
method in it,” never suspecting that the melancholy Dane 
is taking bitter pleasure in ridiculing him to his face. As 
Polonius goes, the two friends come in. Hamlet 
shrewdly suspects that they have come at the king’s re¬ 
quest. He tells them that he has of late been deeply 
troubled, so that life has lost all its beauty, and he finds 
no joy in man nor in woman. The two tell him of the 
coming of a band of players. At once a scheme to test 
the king and prove his guilt beyond doubt flashes into 
his mind. He receives the players as his old friends, and 
bids Polonius care for them as honored guests. He de- 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


15 

tains the leader of the troupe and arranges to have “The 
Murder of Gonzago” played before the king, adding cer¬ 
tain lines of his own. In this way he will be able to see 
if the guilt of Claudius will betray itself. His fatal ten¬ 
dency to inquire into a matter, to see and know as well 
as feel, has made him delay these three months the keep¬ 
ing of his promise to the ghost, and he has even come to 
doubt the ghost, to fear it may be an instrument sent 
from the devil to lead him into evil. And so he resolves: 

“The play’s the thing 

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” 

Act III. The Climax is Reached 

He had made a definite promise to the ghost which, so 
far, he has not fulfilled, a delay for which he hates him¬ 
self, yet which he seems unable to bring to a close. Con¬ 
sequently, the king is beginning to wonder what may be 
the cause of his strange actions, and to question whether 
it will not be well to let him go abroad on some errand 
which shall keep him where he can do no harm. In scene 
1 Claudius questions the two friends whom he has set to 
spy upon Hamlet, but with no result. They tell him of 
Hamlet’s plan to have the players perform at court, and 
of his request that the king and the queen be present. 
The king assents and then dismisses all, explaining to the 
queen that he and Polonius are planning to spy on Ham¬ 
let as he talks with Ophelia and see if this love for her 
be the cause of his madness. Even Polonius is a little 
ashamed of using so fine a thing as Hamlet’s love as a 
means to decoy him into betrayal, while Claudius shows 


i6 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


us that the deed by which he won a wife and a throne 
sits heavy upon his soul. As they hide, Hamlet enters, 
pondering whether it may not, after all, be best to end 
a life that has so little but suffering for him, and to give 
over his attempt to face, single-handed, the difficulties he 
must meet if he is to keep his promise. If he could be 
sure that death were but a sleep, he would no longer 
bear the burden, but the uncertainty gives him pause. 
Meeting Ophelia, he becomes ironical, for this Ophelia, 
who has failed him when he needed her love and help, is 
not the woman he had loved. Then, in bitter rebuke, he 
bids her get to a nunnery, where, at least, she may work 
no more harm to foolish men. As he goes out, Ophelia 
bitterly grieves over the change in him and her share in 
causing it. Claudius fears him more than ever, for he 
sees clearly that this is not madness, and so resolves to 
send him out of Denmark. 

Scene 2 shows the players before the court, present¬ 
ing the play, amended by Hamlet, which shall represent 
the murder of King Hamlet by Claudius and so trap 
Claudius. Horatio has been taken into Hamlet’s confi¬ 
dence. They watch the king as the murder is enacted, 
and are convinced of his guilt as he rises and hurries 
from the hall, unable to bear the sight. Polonius, more 
sure than ever of Hamlet’s madness, comes to bid him go 
to his mother’s room. He goes, prepared to wring her 
soul by his reproaches. 

Scene 3 brings the actual climax. The king, in an 
agony of suffering, endeavors to kneel in prayer for for¬ 
giveness, but he cannot bend his stubborn soul to peni¬ 
tence. As he is struggling, Hamlet enters and sees his 


THE STORY OF HAMLET i; 

chance to keep his vow. But again his fatal habit of 
looking at all sides instead of acting comes to the fore. 
If he kill the king now in the act of prayer, Claudius’ 
soul, evil as it is, will go straight to heaven, while that 
of the man he slew suffers in purgatory. So he lets the 
chance go and his word remains unfulfilled. Even as 
he leaves, the king, rising from his knees, tells us how 
vain had been his effort to pray, and we realize that 
Hamlet has had his chance and lost it. 

Scene 4. Polonius hides behind the arras to watch 
Hamlet with his mother. The queen, alarmed at 
Hamlet’s wild words and angry reproaches, cries for 
help. Polonius betrays his presence and Hamlet stabs 
him, believing it to be the king, and thus unknowingly 
makes for himself another foe, Laertes, who is to 
avenge his father s death. He turns to his mother and 
holds up to her soul the mirror of her sins in such awful 
righteous wrath that she is torn with shame and only 
the intervention of the ghost of his father saves her from 
even severer treatment. She does not see the apparition, 
and believes that Hamlet raves in madness. The ghost 
rebukes Hamlet for his “almost blunted purpose” and 
bids him help his tortured mother. He wrings from her 
the promise not to let the king coax from her an account 
of what happened in the interview, and tells her of his 
impending visit to England in the company of his two 
friends, whom he trusts as much as he would a poisonous 
serpent, and hints at his plan to let them be “hoist with 
their own petard”—caught in their own net. 


i8 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


Act IV. Carries On the Falling Action 

Scene i. The queen tells of the death of Polonius and 
at the same time shield^Hamlet, claiming it to be an act 
of madness. Shrewdly enough, the king cries, “It had 
been so with us, had we been there!” for he begins to 
see that Hamlet’s madness is directed against him, and 
is the more resolved to put him out of the way. 

Scene 2 sees the almost maddened prince confronted 
by the two false friends, seeking to know what he has 
done with the body. Instead of telling them, he re¬ 
proaches them for what they are—sponges to be used and 
sucked dry and cast off by the king. He goes with them 
to Claudius and in Scene 3 is almost as brusk to Claudius, 
bidding him send to see if Polonius be in heaven, if not, 
“go seek him in the other place yourself.” The king 
orders him to England and after his departure, tells of 
the plan to have Hamlet murdered there. 

Scene 4 bringing in the heroic figure of young 
Fortinbras, risking his life for a trifle, gives Hamlet a 
chance to see his own procrastination against the soldiers’ 
readiness to act, and makes him resolve to do the deed 
that he should have done months ago. 

Scene 5 shows us poor Ophelia, quite mad under the 
double loss of father and lover, the one by the hand of 
the other. Laertes has returned from France, hot-foot, 
to avenge his father’s murder and hurried burial. The 
Danes who follow him are acclaiming him king, and 
Claudius is in a fair way to lose what he had sinned to 
gain. But by strategy he turns Laertes’ rage toward 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


19 


Hamlet, aided by the sight of poor mad Ophelia, who 
increases her brother’s fury against the prince. 

Scene 6 gives us the news of Hamlet’s escape from 
the ship and return to Denmark. The plot thickens and 
we feel the end approaching, and are not surprised in 
Scene 7 to find Claudius openly planning with Laertes to 
work Hamlet’s death by foul means. Laertes is 
strengthened in his purpose by the news of Ophelia’s 
suicide, and goes to prepare the poison for his sword. 

Act V. Brings the Catastrophe 

Scene 1. Hamlet comes upon the gravediggers, pre¬ 
paring Ophelia’s grave. He muses at the equalizing 
power of death. When he realizes that the grave is 
Ophelia’s and hears Laertes’ grief, mad with his own 
pain he leaps into the grave and challenges Laertes to 
match his love for Ophelia. Laertes would have slain 
him had they not been parted, and they agreed to meet 
and fight. 

In Scene 2 Hamlet tells Horatio how he discovered the 
treachery of his friends, and how he met it with a 
scheme for their own death. He receives the messenger 
from Laertes and prepares to fight. Meeting Laertes 
he frankly admits his guilt, but pleads that he was mad 
when he did it. Laertes, knowing he fights with a 
poisoned weapon, forfeits all our sympathy by feigning 
to accept Hamlet’s explanation. The king sets upon the 
table a cup of poisoned wine which is to secure Hamlet’s 
death if the poisoned rapier fails. As the duel goes 
on, the queen, ignorant of the poison, drinks from the 


20 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


fatal cup before the king can stop her. Laertes wounds 
Hamlet. In the fight they change weapons, and Laertes 
is wounded by his own sword. He confesses his 
treachery just as the queen, dying, warns Hamlet of the 
poisoned cup. Hamlet turns his sword upon the king 
and slays him with the poisoned blade. Dying, Hamlet 
begs Horatio to set his cause before the world, and urges 
him to aid young Fortinbras to the crown. “The rest is 
silence. ,, The messengers bring word that the false 
friends are dead, and Fortinbras, hearing the tale from 
Horatio, bears the body away for royal burial. 


STRUCTURE OF THE PLAY 


A play is called a tragedy or a comedy according to 
the fate of the hero. If he overcomes the dangers and 
difficulties which beset him, no matter how real these 
may be the play is a comedy. If he is overcome by them 
and defeated, the play is a tragedy. In the tragedy the 
defeat of the hero usually ends in his death. 

Each of the five acts of a five-act play has its distinct 
office in the plot. Act I gives the setting, sometimes 
called the four W’s, time, place, circumstances, characters 
*—answers to the questions where? when? why? who? 
regarding the story of the play. It strikes the keynote, 
sad or gay, tragic or comic, and gives the incentive , the 
moment at which the hero, or central figure, or force as 
he is sometimes called, does the act or makes the decis¬ 
ion that starts the play going. Act II begins the rising 
action , the series of events arising out of the incen¬ 
tive and leads to the climax. It introduces all the 
characters necessary for the complication of the plot. 
Act III carries the rising action to the climax, though 
sometimes this is delayed till the fourth act. There may 
be one or two points in the action of intense interest, 
either before or after the climax, and distinguished from 
it only by the fact that the action does not turn there. 
These are called tragic moments. At the climax the 
action turns; whoever has been supreme in the ascending 


21 


22 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


action is here seen to begin to decline; in a comedy the 
counterplayer or counterforce, in a tragedy, the player 
or force. Act IV carries on the descending action, un¬ 
tangles the threads of the plot and clears the stage of all 
lesser figures to leave everything clear for the finale. 
Act V completes the action, showing the catastrophe or 
inevitable outcome of the action begun in the incentive 
carried to the climax and turned there. It may be pre¬ 
ceded by a moment when for a moment it seems that the 
hero or force may yet succeed, but this is only for a 
moment; he is, in the tragedy, defeated and usually dies. 
The moment is known as the moment of last suspense. 
After the catastrophe there is usually a short scene or 
part of a scene in which the career of the hero or of his 
conqueror is summed up. 

In Hamlet Act I informs us of the time, the reign of 
King Claudius of Denmark, the place, Denmark, the 
chief actors, Hamlet, his mother and his “uncle-father,” 
and his father’s ghost. It strikes the keynote in the open¬ 
ing scene with its talk of depression, of the threat of war, 
and of the ghost, and gives the incentive when Hamlet 
vows to avenge his father. Act II carries on the rising 
action, brings in the element of his love for Ophelia, and 
shows his plan of madness and the danger he is in from 
the spies, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, Act III shows 
the result of his having hesitated so long in the increased 
suspicions of Claudius and his own indecision. There is 
a tragic moment when at the play the king shows his 
guilt, but the climax comes when Hamlet lets go his 
chance to kill the praying king, fearing lest his soul go 
at once to heaven. Act IV unwinds the entanglements 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


2 3 


and shows how he has brought new peril upon himself 
by his failure, and how the king plans to use Laertes to 
cause Hamlet’s death. Act V has the stage clear for the 
last great scene in which Hamlet is wounded by the 
poisoned sword of Laertes, but not before he has 
wounded Laertes, seen his mother drink the poisoned 
cup, and killed the king. The catastrophe sees prac¬ 
tically every one of the major characters dead upon the 
stage, and young Fortinbras and Horatio sum up the 
character of Hamlet. It may be outlined thus: 

1. Setting. Time, reign of king Claudius. 

2. Place. Denmark. 

3. Important Characters. Hamlet, Claudius, Ghost, 

Ophelia, Queen, Laertes, Polonius, Horatio. 

4. Circumstances. Murder of King Hamlet by his 

brother and the marriage of the latter to the 
queen but a month after the king’s death. 
Unhappiness of Hamlet at his mother’s act. 
The coming of the ghost. 

5. Incentive. Hamlet’s vow to avenge the murder 

revealed to him by the ghost. 

6. Rising Action. Hamlet’s plan to feign madness. 

Polonius’ command to Ophelia to reject his 
addresses. His discovery of the spies and 
plan'to foil them and keep his secret from the 
king. The news of the arrival of the players. 
His plan to make the king betray himself be¬ 
fore the court by the agency of a play. The 
success of the plan. The king’s betrayal. 

7. Climax. His opportunity to kill the king and his 

failure to use it. 


24 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


8. Falling Action. His rebuke to his mother. 

Second appearance of the ghost. Death of 
Polonius. Madness and suicide of Ophelia. 
King’s plot to» get rid of Hamlet in England. 
His escape and return. King’s plot with 
Laertes. The duel. The queen’s death. 
Wounding of both Laertes and Hamlet by the 
poisoned blade. Murder of king. Death of 
Laertes. 

9. Catastrophe. Death of Hamlet after he has, too 

late, kept his vow. 

10. Conclusion. The eulogy by Fortinbras. 

The Stories. There is but one story, that of Hamlet, 
with two threads, his revenge and his love. The disap¬ 
pointment in Ophelia, in finding that she is so ready to 
give him up at her father’s demand, and her willingness 
to believe ill of him, deepen his melancholy and make 
him more prone to brood and less ready to act. Her 
death makes her brother, Laertes, vow the death of 
Hamlet, and so brings about the duel in which Hamlet 
meets his own death, after having at last kept his vow 
to kill the king. 

Suspense. With but one plot it is difficult to secure 
suspense, but this is achieved by the alternation of scenes 
of action and those of meditation and hesitation on the 
part of Hamlet, by bringing in young Fortinbras, by the 
scenes in the home of Polonius, and by the scenes with 
the spies. 

Comic Element. In such a play comedy would be 
utterly out of place. The nearest approach is the scene 
of the two gravediggers, with its grim irony. 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


25 


Length. Because it is so profound a study of human 
nature the play is one of the longest. A modern pro¬ 
ducer finds himself confronted by the problem of what, 
in all its riches, to omit, and how to condense. 


CHARACTERS 


Hamlet 

I. Like Julius Caesar Hamlet is a tragedy of the intel¬ 
lect rather than of the passions. Dowden says: “Neither 
Brutus nor Hamlet is the victim of an overmastering 
passion as are Othello, Coriolanus, Macbeth. The burden 
of a terrible responsibility is laid on each and neither is 
fitted for the burden. Brutus is disqualified for action 
by his moral idealism, his student-like habits, his tendency 
to deal with things in the abstract, rather than with men 
and acts. Hamlet is disqualified for action by his ex¬ 
cess of reflective tendency, his moodiness, and his un¬ 
stable will, which fluctuates between complete inactivity 
and fits of excited energy. Naturally sensitive, he re¬ 
ceives a painful shock in the hasty second marriage of 
his mother; then follows the terrible discovery of his 
father’s murder, with the injunction upon him to revenge 
the crime; upon this again follows the repulse from 
Ophelia. A deep melancholy settles upon his spirit and 
all life grows dark and sad to his vision. Although hat¬ 
ing his father’s murderer, he has little heart to push the 
revenge. He is aware that he is suspected and sur¬ 
rounded by spies, and partly to baffle them, partly to hide 
his real self, partly because his whole moral nature is in¬ 
deed deeply disordered, he assumes madness. The dis- 


26 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


27 


covery of Claudius’s guilt by means of the play leaves 
him still incapable of the last decisive act of vengeance.” 

Yet he is no coward. He faces Laertes boldly, and 
fights a clean fight, in sharp contrast to the deceit prac¬ 
tised against him. Anxious to be set right before the 
world, he bids Horatio tell the world his story and ab¬ 
solve him. This said, “The rest is silence,” for he has 
followed the traitor and the false wife to answer to the 
spirit of the king, his father, how he kept his vow. Men 
have believed that through him Shakespere spoke his own 
views. So they say of Jaques in As You Like It. 
Naturally, every profoundly meditative character will 
Voice the philosophy of his creator, but aside from that 
there is no reason to believe that Shakespere made 
Hamlet his mouthpiece. 


Ophelia 

Close to Hamlet in interest stands Ophelia, like him 
in that she is cast for a role too great for her to play, 
unlike .him in any depth of intellect, a sweet little girl, 
obedient to the men of her family, gentle, lovable, kind, 
unwilling to hurt anyone, yet by her fatal weakness hurt¬ 
ing to death the one she loved best. While Hamlet’s 
madness is feigned to protect him, hers is real, the result 
of a strain too heavy for her gentle nature to bear. She 
is modest, quiet, lovable; yet not without a little of the 
shrewdness of her father when she turns Laertes’ coun¬ 
sel back upon himself. Had she possessed a greater 
strength she might have given Hamlet the resolution he so 
sorely needed, but in all the play there is hardly a more 


28 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


simply tragic scene than the one in which she tells her 
father how the prince came to her, so changed, and with¬ 
out a word, scanned her features closely, then sadly shak¬ 
ing his head, left her. He saw that no aid was to be 
found in her, that any battle must be fought against, 
rather than with, her help. Had she been stronger, the 
tragedy might have turned to comedy with a truly happy 
ending. 


POLONIUS AND LAERTES 

Polonius and Laertes are father and son, the one in his 
old age what the other in his youth promises to be. 
Shrewd, worldly-wise, cautious, selfish, neither one has a 
thought beyond his own interests and the name of his 
family, yet Laertes is ready to fight to the death for his 
father while Hamlet hesitates until he almost loses the 
chance of avenging the death of his father. Polonius is 
a silly old dotard who deserves the biting sarcasm of 
Hamlet, and earns his death by his spying. Hamlet 
knows him for the king’s tool and feels but little com¬ 
punction when he discovers his error in killing Polonius, 
thinking him to be Claudius. 


Horatio 

Horatio is almost the only man in the play who wins 
our unqualified admiration, and yet he has but a minor 
part. Him alone Hamlet feels he can trust. It is to him 
that Hamlet tells the tale of his deeds as they should be 
told to posterity, forbidding Horatio to follow him in 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


29 


death, and bidding him relate the true story to the 
world. 


Gertrude and Claudius 

Gertrude and Claudius are fit partners in crime. There 
was a. kinship of evil between them that naturally 
brought them together, yet neither one was entirely happy 
in wickedness, for Gertrude shows in her talk with 
Hamlet that she has not lost all sense of guilt, and the 
king, in his soliloquy after his vain effort to pray for 
pardon, shows us that his soul was not at peace in sin. 
Yet he does not hesitate to plan other murders to make 
his evil state secure, and in every case it is the same kind 
of deed that killed the former king, one that will leave 
him apparently clear, while removing an obstacle from 
his path. We feel that both get their just deserts, the 
queen by drinking the cup her guilty husband had fixed 
for her son, the king by the poison he had urged Laertes 
to put upon the rapier. 

Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern 

As for the pair of spies, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, 
we feel nothing but contempt for men who use friendship 
as a cloak for spying, and who, for gold, would betray 
any friend who might trust them. They try to bargain 
with everyone, for gold is their only aim. For it they 
would connive at murder. And so we feel a sense of the 
eternal fitness of things when we learn how skilfully 
Hamlet has out-played them and sent them to the death 
they had planned to lead him to. 


30 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


The Universal Quality of the Characters 

It is a gloomy, brooding play, almost untouched by any 
ray of light. Every character is either weak, or common- 
placedly self-seeking, or frankly selfish or evil, save 
Horatio, and he has too little to do to lighten in any way 
the gloom of the whole atmosphere. Yet in spite of this 
it has been the favorite of actors and audiences since 
the time of its writing. Indeed, it is said that every actor 
cherishes the desire to play Hamlet before he dies, just 
as every actress longs to play Lady Macbeth. Its great¬ 
ness lies in the fact not that it is the mouthpiece of 
Shakespere or any other one person, but of all of us, 
our fears, our hesitations, our desire to be convinced be¬ 
fore we are bold enough to act, our longing for the sym¬ 
pathy and understanding of others, our dread of the task 
too great for our strength, our fear of what lies beyond 
this mortal coil; all these, and many more ideas find ex¬ 
pression for us in phrases that, by much repeating, have 
become so much a part of our language that we were 
not aware, till we read the pages of the play, that the 
words were these of any one man and not of humanity. 


NOTES AND COMMENTS ON THE TEXT 


Act I 

Scene I. The keynote of the play is here sounded, the bitter 
night and its depressing effect upon Francisco, who is “sick at 
heart,” the talk of the ghost, the account of the uprising in Nor¬ 
way, the feeling that the dread apparition is an omen of evil to 
come to the state. 

’Tis now struck twelve —the witching hour when spirits were 
permitted to leave their graves. 

Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio. The ghost must be 
addressed in Latin or some other learned speech, just why, no¬ 
body knew. 

A little more than kin and less than kind. Too much related 
to him: he is uncle-stepfather and king in one, but I am not of 
his kind and therefore not really related. 

Seems, madam? The emphasis is on the “I.” She may seem 
to be what she is not, but he cannot. 

Let the world take note —Claudius practically proclaims Ham¬ 
let his heir, perhaps with a view to making him a partisan. He 
compasses his own undoing when he urges Hamlet not to re¬ 
turn to the university. 

This too, too solid flesh —some take this with the queen’s 
words, “He’s fat and scant of breath” to mean that Hamlet is 
overburdened with flesh. Possibly that might account for his 
inertia. 

His canon *gainst self-slaughter —only the fear of offending 
God keeps him from suicide, so out of joint are the times in 
which he lives. Hot upon this scene of impotent grief comes the 
news of the ghost, and he resolves to see it. 

The funeral baked meats —the feast served at the funeral 
had hardly time to grow cold before the wedding feast was set. 


3i 


32 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 



Foul deeds will rise —he suspects that Claudius has played 
foul, though so far he has nothing but surmise to go on. Note 
the two rhyming lines used to announce a decided change of 
scene. 

Horatio fears that the ghost is an evil spirit come to do 
Hamlet harm. It may be a subconscious memory of this that 
later makes Hamlet doubt the ghost, himself. 

The ghost has unmanned him and almost driven him mad. Per¬ 
haps it is at this moment that he conceives the idea of feigning 
madness to cloak his observations enters his mind. Note the 
flippant tone of his comments as the ghost from below urges 
them to swear, changing to a more serious and sane tone in his 
final comment, “Rest, rest, perturbed spirit.” 

Act II 

Scene 2. To be mad is to be mad —says Polonius. No won¬ 
der the queen exclaims, “More matter with less art. Talk sense, 
man!” But Polonius cannot help talking in antitheses and 
figures. ** ’Tis true ’tis pity; and pity ’tis ’tis true” “the cause 
of this effect—or rather of this defect,—for the effect defective 
comes by cause.” He cannot be simple to save his life. 

An aery of children -- Just at this time companies of 

school-boys, notably of St. Paul’s school, were acting in London, 
and the novelty had quite put the older players out of fashion. 
Consequently, many companies had gone on tour. This loss of 
a London audience, not any law against them, had sent them to 
other cities. 

I am but mad north-north-west. I am only mad when I 
choose to be. He cannot resist the temptation to tease the spies 
whom he suspects of being what they are. 

The entry of Polonius gives him a chance to vent his anger 
and disappointment in his former friends by being pointedly 
rude to Polonius, but in such a way as to pass for madness. 
Nor can he keep from making bad puns to the actors. The 
former taker of woman’s parts has grown a beard, and comes 
to “beard him in Denmark”—but he hopes that the latter’s voice 
has not yet changed, “cracked in the ring.” It was not till half 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


33 


a century later that women took women’s parts. As he talks 
to them, a plan comes to him to test the ghost. He sends off all 
but one in care of Polonius, and with this one plans to interpo¬ 
late, into a play of their repertory a few lines that shall make 
it absolutely fit the account given by the ghost of the murder. 
Of course, Shakespere invented the play, for there could hardly 
be one so ready to their hand. 

Act III 

Scene 2. Speak the speech trippingly - Shakespere hated 

the affectation of many of the actors of his day—and later 
days—who strutted about the stage and mouthed the lines so 
that the sense was lost. He prefers that simple, natural man¬ 
ner which shall subordinate the actor to the part, and hold a 
mirror up to nature. 

His praise of Horatio is perhaps the highest ever given to a 
friend. He finds Horatio a man who can endure all for a friend 
and find it joy, who is indifferent to the whims of. fortune, 
who is not the slave of passion, but makes passion his servant. 
Therefore he trusts him. 

Scene 3. Never alone did the king sigh —the doctrine of the 
divine right of kings had been firmly established in England 
with the coming of the Stuarts. 

Scene 4. Note how, even while he hates his mother for her sin, 
he trusts her. He does not trouble to feign madness. The bit¬ 
ing anger of his replies to her questions, and his accusations of 
her are not those of a madman. He hears the voice of Polonius 
and hoping it is the king, stabs through the curtain. It is part 
of his punishment for delay that he kills the wrong man. With 
but the one comment, “To be too busy is sometimes dangerous,” 
he proceeds to hold up to the queen the mirror of reproach, to 
show her what she is, as partner in Claudius’ guilt. He paints 
her sin in such words that she cowers before him. The queen 
must have been a woman of unusual charm that one man should 
commit murder for her and that the spirit of the murdered hus¬ 
band should refuse to let her be hurt. 



34 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


Act IV 

Scene 5. Ophelia, crazed by grief, is a pathetic figure. We 
blame her for her weakness, but pity her for the sorrow that 
has come to her as a part of the consequence of Hamlet’s fail¬ 
ure to take his opportunity to kill the king. 

Scene 6. The scene with its account of the fight with the 
pirates proves that the failure of Hamlet is not due to cowardice. 

Scene 7. In this scene both Claudius and Laertes, by their un¬ 
derhand trickery, lose any sympathy or respect we might have 
had for them. 


Act V 

Scene 1. Suicides might not have Christian burial, hence the 
grave-digger’s wonder at Ophelia’s receiving it. The talk of the 
two grave-diggers, with its little humor, is for the groundlings, 
to lighten the somberness of the approaching tragedy a little, 
and to create suspense. The puns of Hamlet, Horatio and the 
clown are typical of the time. All the plays are full of them. 

Scene 2. His talk with Horatio is not the cunning of madness 
but the carefully reasoned plan of a shrewd contriver. 

“Popped in between the election and my hopes-” For the 

first time we see a personal ground for his hatred of Claudius, 
other than that of the murder. 


THE STYLE 


In “Hamlet” we have Shakespere's noblest blank verse. The 
iambic pentameter of the normal blank verse is kept from 
monotony by the use of the pause for emphasis, the variation of 
the breathing pause or caesura, and the substitution of spondees 
and trochees for the iambic. The substitution which changes 
the expected place of the pause, as of trochee for iambus, gives 
special emphasis. Note the effect: “To be | or not | to be |, that 
is | the question.|’' Here the trochee, “that is,” puts the emphasis 
on “that” by its use in the iambic line. Note, too, the use of the 
extra syllable without the accent at the last, making the final 
foot an amphibrach and giving the feminine or double ending, 
with its curious hesitant effect at the end of the line. 

“Hamlet” abounds in figures of speech. The metaphors are 
most striking. To Hamlet, Polonius, dead, is “at supper” inso¬ 
much as the worms feast on him, a truly gruesome name for the 
death which, in another metaphor he calls sleep. Note the 
elaboration of the metaphor by which he calls Rosenkrantz a 
sponge in Act IV, Scene 2, and the consistency of the terms used; 
“the aery of little children” of Act II, Scene 2, as if the obnox¬ 
ious boy-players were loudly screeching nestlings. Above all, 
note the immortal soliloquy, (“To be or not to be”) known 
wherever the name of Shakespere is known, so rich in metaphor, 
“the sleep of death,” the dead, as travelers to that bourne from 
which none return, the hardships of life becoming the “slings 
and arrows of outrageous fortune,” the life after death—dreams 
which may be worse than the realities we know—why, if one 
starts to speak of figures, one must dissect the whole play. 

Note, too, the bitter condemnation of himself, in Act IV, 
Scene 5, when he so justly sums up his own inaction as he 


35 


36 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


sees it beside the valor of the common soldier, who fights for 
a cause far less dear than his; his bitter comment on the vanity 
of human greatness in the gravedigger scene; the biting shrewd¬ 
ness of his comments to Polonius, who observes, “Tho this be 
madness, yet there’s method in it.” 

The play is full of sayings that have passed into our language. 
“Frailty, thy name is woman.” “A knavish speech sleeps in a 
foolish ear.” “Your worm is your only emperor for diet.” 

“Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay, 

May stop a crack to keep the wind away.” 

“Rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument, 
but greatly to find honor in a straw when honor’s at the stake.” 
“Rosemary for remembrance. Pansies for thoughts,” “Hoist 
with his own petard”; and, perhaps best known, next to the 
soliloquy, the advice of Polonius as to the proper conduct of a 
gentleman. 

Perhaps because of the lack of suitable costumes or scenery, 
the play is also full of vivid descriptions. One may see the for¬ 
mer majesty of Denmark stalk by the warders that bitter night 
upon the ramparts, armed from top to toe, the beaver up, show¬ 
ing a countenance more in sorrow than in anger, the beard a 
sable, silvered. One sees the sunrise as, 

“The morn in russet mantle clad, 

Moves o’er the slope of yon high eastern hill.” 

One feels the nipping and eager air that bites shrewdly and 
makes the warder sick at heart. 

And in Ophelia’s description of Hamlet as “the glass of fash¬ 
ion and the mould of form,” and in an earlier passage of the 
Hamlet of assumed madness, we need no picture to see with the 
poet’s eye. 


FAMOUS CRITICISM 


No other play has called forth such volumes of criticism. 
Battles have been fought over single lines. Notice the Variorum 
edition and then consider how the play has moved the hearts 
of men. Perhaps the most famous criticism is that of Goethe 
in Wilhelm Meister: "To me it is clear that Shakespere meant 
in the present case to represent the effects of a great action laid 
on a soul unfit for the performance of it. There is an oak-tree 
planted in a costly jar that should have borne only pleasant 
flowers in its bosom; the roots expand, the jar is shivered. A 
lovely, pure and most moral nature, without the strength of 
nerve that forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden too heavy for 
it, which it cannot bear and must not cast away. All duties are 
holy for him; the present is too hard. Impossibilities have been 
required of him; not in themselves impossibilities, but such for 
him. He winds and turns and torments himself; he advances 
and recoils; is ever put in mind and ever puts himself in mind; 
at last does all but lose his purpose from his thoughts, yet with¬ 
out recovering his peace of mind. 

Coleridge, in his <f Notes and Lectures on Shakespere " says: 
“In Hamlet Shakespere seems to have wished to exemplify the 
moral necessity of a due balance between our attention to the ob¬ 
ject of our senses and our meditations on the workings of our 
minds—and equilibrium between the real and the imaginary 
worlds. In Hamlet this balance is disturbed; his thoughts and 
the images of his fancy are far more vivid than his actual per¬ 
ceptions ; and his very perceptions, passing through the medium 
of his conceptions acquire a form and color not their own. 
Hence we see an enormous intellectual activity and a propor¬ 
tionate aversion to real action, and this character is placed in 
circumstances where it must act on the spur of the moment. 


37 


3» 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


Hamlet is brave and careless of death, but vacillates from sen¬ 
sibility and hesitates from thought and loses the power of 
action in the energy of resolve.” 

Victor Hugo, in “William Shakespere,” says: “Hamlet 
played the madman for his safety. From the moment he learns 
from the ghost of the guilt of Claudius, he is in danger. To 
know that the king was an assassin was treason.” 

Hudson, in “Shakespere, his Life, Art, Characters,” says: 
“The ghost calls for revenge, but stipulates no particular kind. 
Hamlet naturally supposes the payment to be in kind, an eye 
for an eye. Is this right, from his point of view? It is nothing 
less than to kill by the same act his uncle, his mother’s husband 
and his king. How shall he justify such an act to the world? 
How vindicate to himself the very act for which he is condemn¬ 
ing another? Whenever he sees or even thinks of the king, 
his calmness forsakes him and a fury of madness takes posses¬ 
sion of him. The best instance of this is the horrid scene where 
he raves out for sparing the king when he finds him praying; 
where it is plainly neither his moral reason nor his understand¬ 
ing, but simply his madness that speaks.” 

Taine says: “His madness is feigned, I admit, but his mind, 
as a door whose hinges are twisted, swings and bangs to every 
wind with a mad precipitance and with a discordant noise. 
He has no need to search for the strange ideas, apparent incon¬ 
sistencies, incoherences and exaggerations, the deluge of sarcasm 
which he accumulates; he finds them within himself. He does 
himself no violence, he simply gives himself up to them.” 


SHAKESPERE’S LIFE 


Born in 1564 in the little town of Stratford-on-Avon, tradi¬ 
tion says on the twenty-third of April, he was christened in the 
parish church on the twenty-sixth. His parents were well-to-do, 
his mother, Mary Arden, being of a much better family than his 
father, a descendant of the noble family of Warwick. His 
father, John, was a burgher of Stratford, combining the trades 
of butcher, tanner, glover and leather merchant. From his 
mother he inherited his love for the beautiful and a finer taste 
than one would look for in the son of a man who could not 
write his own name. For some years the father was prosperous, 
and the boy attended the free grammar-school of Stratford, 
where tradition still shows his desk, and where he got the little 
Latin and less Greek of which Ben Jonson speaks. Every year 
at fair-time the mummers and strollers came to Stratford, so that 
the boy knew well just such players as those that came to 
Elsinore, to be used by Hamlet to trap the king. By the time 
he was fourteen family affairs had become so involved that his 
father was in prison for debt and the boy was making his own 
living in various ways, if we may believe the different traditions. 
Some say as teacher, some as butcher, some as apprentice to a 
dramatist, some as lawyer’s clerk, believing that only so can his 
knowledge of legal terms be explained. 

At any rate he was making his way enough to be married in 
November, 1582, to Anne Hathaway. There is a charming love 
poem ascribed to him, “She hath a way, Anne Hathaway.” 
Some say the marriage was unhappy. In 1587 he went to 
London. 

Here again we have nothing but tradition as to his beginnings. 
Some say he was horse boy outside a theater, then became odd- 
job man in the theater, then playwright and actor of small roles, 

39 


40 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


at last friend and partner of Richard Burbage, and with him 
owner or lessee of the most important theaters of London, the 
Curtain, Globe, Blackfriars. 

He made warm friends at the court of Elizabeth, the young 
Earl of Southampton being one of the first and dearest, to whom 
so many of the sonnets are addressed. Later he returned to 
Stratford, where he bought a house in New Place and in 1611 
or 1612 moved there with his family. But at times the quiet of 
Stratford palled on him and he would ride half-way to London, 
to the Mermaid Tavern, to meet a gathering of London friends. 
At one of these merry meetings it is said he caught a fever which 
caused his death, on the 23d of April, 1616, the anniversary of 
his birth. An inscription composed by himself and graved on 
his tomb, has kept his bones safe: 

Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear 
To dig the dust enclosed here. 

Blest be the man that spares these stones 
And cursed be he that moves my bones. 

He was survived by his wife and two daughters, but the 
family was short-lived, for the last lineal descendant, his grand¬ 
daughter, died in the reign of Charles II. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Furness, Variorum Shakespere, 2 vols., for explanation and 
discussion of passages. 

Bucknill, Mad Folks of Shakespere, pp. 48-159. 

Coleridge, Works, Vol. IV, pp. 144-164. 

Dowden, Shakespere’s Mind and Art, pp. 111-143. 

Gervinus, Commentaries, pp. 548-582. 

Guizot, Works, Vol. IV, pp. 144-164. 

Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespere’s Plays, pp. 70-76. 

Hudson, Shakespere’s Life, Art and Characters, Vol. II, 
pp. 258-312. 

Mrs. Jameson, Characters of Shakespere’s Women, pp. 109-123. 
Reed, English History in Shakespere’s Plays, pp. 406-438. 
Ulrici, Shakespere’s Dramatic Art, pp. 213-227. 

Moulton, Shakespere as a Dramatic Artist, p. 304. 

Morley, H., Early Prose Romances. 

White, R. G., Studies in Shakespere, pp. 77-101. 

Brandes, G., Shakespere. (Consult Index.) 

Bradley, A. C., Shakespere’s Tragedies, Lecture III. 

Stopford, Brooke, Ten More Plays of Shakespere, pp. 91-139- 
Baker, G. P., Development as a dramatist (excellent pictures 
of theatres). 

Jenks, Tudor, In the Days of Shakespere, pp. 244-250. 

Morton, Luce, Handbook to Shakespere’s Works, pp. 262-280. 


41 


EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 


1. Give a vivid account of the scene in which Hamlet meets 
Laertes at the grave of Ophelia. 

2. If Macbeth had been in Hamlet’s place what would he have 
done? Justify your opinion in such a way as to show knowledge 
of both plays. 

3. Contrast the character of Hamlet and that of Laertes. 

4. Select from the play one incident that shows you Shakes- 
pere’s ideas of right and wrong—his standard of morals. Nar¬ 
rate the incident and explain what standard it shows. 

5. Name two characters in the plan that seem to you most 
like real people. With reference to each mention the character¬ 
istics that make the character real. In each case indicate by 
summary, supported if desired by quotation, some situation or 
speech that shows these characteristics. 

6. Discuss at length the following quotation, illustrating it by 
reference to characters in the play: 

Shakespere creates human beings. No novelist, no other 
dramatist, has ever drawn so many imagined men and women 
that the world has accepted as real. We disagree about them. 
We question their motives just as we do those of people about 
us. But we never question their reality. 

7. A critic has said of Shakespere’s women that they are al¬ 
ways the redeeming, ennobling, uplifting influence in the play; 
that he has only three bad women in all the plays, and one weak 
woman, Ophelia, and it is because she fails him when he most 
needs her love and aid that Hamlet fails. What is your opinion 
as to this? Justify it from the play. 

8. What event do you consider the actual beginning of the 
plot? Why? Point out moments of suspense in the play and 
show their significance in the development of the plot. Point 
out minor crises that might be called a climax, save that the 
plot does not turn, and show the significance of each in the plot. 

' 42 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


43 


9. Write a character sketch of Horatio, basing it upon what 
you see of him in the play. 

10. Show the connection with the plot of two of the following 
characters: Laertes, Young Fortinbras, Polonius, Guildenstern, 
Francisco. 

11. Show how the affairs of at least three of the characters 
of the play come to a justly deserved conclusion. 

12. What character in the play seems to you most really 
noble? Write a vivid account of his finest act. 

13. Mention two minor characters needed in the play and 
show how each one works into the plot. 

14. Discuss, supporting your answer by references to the play, 
the question, Is the plot natural, i.e., true to life as you know it 
to be? 

15. Give several reasons why the play should or should not be 
read in high school. 

16. What do you consider the most exciting moment? Why? 
Reproduce it as vividly as possible. 

17. Explaining especially the passages italicised, rewrite the fol¬ 
lowing in your own words, making the meaning absolutely clear 
as you think it to be: 

To be or not to be: that is the question. 

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles 
And by opposing end them! To die: to sleep; 

No more; and by a sleep to say we end 
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wished. To die: to sleep; 

To sleep: perchance to dream : ay, there’s the rub; 

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil 
Must give us pause; there’s the respect 
That makes calamity of so long life; 

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 

The oppressors’ wrong, the proud man’s contumely, 


44 


THE STORY OF HAMLET 


The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, 

The insolence of office, and the spurns 
That patient merit of the unworthy takes, 

When he himself might his quietus make 
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear 
To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 

But that the dread of something after death. 

The undiscovered country from whose bourne 
No traveler returns, puzzles the will 
And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
Than fly to others that we know not of? 

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all 
And thus the native hue of resolution 
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought 
And enterprises of great pith and moment 
With this regard their currents turn awry 
And lose the name of action. 

18. In the passage point out a mixed metaphor, a good meta¬ 
phor, a metonymy. 

19. Explain the following: 

a. A custom more honored in the breach than in the 

observance. 

b. I lack advancement. 

c. Hoist with their own petard. 

d. I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me. 

e. What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba? 

f. I am but mad north-north-west. 

g. There’s a divinity that shapes our ends 
Rough-hew them how we may. 

Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well. 

20. Discuss the following: 

a. What do the chief characters in the play think about 
Hamlet’s madness? To what causes do they at¬ 
tribute it. 

b. What is your opinion of his madness? Why? 

c. What does it enable him to do in the play? 

d. How long does he continue to appear mad? 


HISTORY, LAW AND ECONOMICS 

ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY Charles Ham 

An excellent outline of the historical field to 1700 A.D. Concise, pedagogical, 
thorough. 

MODERN HISTORY Charles Ham 

A thorough survey of the historical field from 1700 to 1922. Exceedingly 
helpful to both teachers and students. 

AMERICAN HISTORY AND CIVICS Giles J. Swan 

A complete and thorough outline of American History and Civics. Adapted 
to the needs of secondary schools. . 

STUDY QUESTIONS IN AMERICAN HISTORY Giles J. Swan 

A supplement to Swan’s Outline of American History and Civics. Contains 
recent examination questions pedagogically arranged. 

COMMERCIAL LAW I. Amster 

A book designed to assist teachers and students in their reviews of the subject. 

It contains comprehensive questions, typical problems and recent examina¬ 
tion papers. 

ECONOMICS Eugene B. Riley , 

A concise and accurate outline of Economics. An excellent summary of a 
first year course in the subject. 

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Helen H. Crandeli 

A brief, concise and accurate treatment of the history of English Liter¬ 
ature. 

HISTORY OF EDUCATION—PART I P. R. V. Curoe 

A complete outline of the history of education in anolent and medieval times. 
Contains questions carefully culled from examination papers for teachers’ 
licenses. 

HISTORY OF EDUCATION—PART II P. R. V, Curoe 

An excellent summary of the history of education in modern times. Includes 
questions taken from examination papers for teachers* licenses. 

HISTORY OF EDUCATION (Complete) P. R. V. Curoe 

A complete summary of the history of education In ancient, medieval and 
modern times. 


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